Hello and Welcome to February!

February is (usually) a very cold, wintry month, and, to be honest, it’s also a tricky fundraising month for TFFT. It’s short, the holiday giving surge has come to a close, and we don’t want to ask the majority of you who recently attended a TFFT event, paid your Scholarship Dues, or made a holiday donation, “hey, will you open your wallet? Again?”.  To you we just want to say shout, “THANK YOU!!” over… and over… and over again. Our reality, however, is that we do still have to meet our monthly fundraising minimum in order for TFFT to move forward.

What’s wonderful is that Valentine’s Day transforms February into a month filled with paper hearts, candy, and L-O-V-E. That’s why this February we are asking you to join our first annual Spread The Love Valentine’s Challenge. We’re asking that you roll up your sleeves and get your family more involved with TFFT by participating in this engaging and unique challenge over the next two weeks.

We created this challenge with a few goals in mind:

– To offer a way for you to directly connect with our students
– To find something fun for you to do as a family
– To spread awareness and to raise some funds during this short month

We hope you’ll join us in one or both of the following ways!

Option One… SHARE THE LOVE:

Make Valentines for our kids!

• Email kaitlin@thefoundationfortomorrow.org, and we will match your family with one (or many!) of the kids
• Spend time with your family creating Valentines
• Take a picture of the process and post it on our Facebook wall, tweet it, or email it to us so we know you’re participating
• Send the Valentine to: P.O. Box 470836, Charlotte, NC 28247
• We’ll send the love overseas to our students!
• We’ll showcase the Valentines here, and the most creative Valentine will receive a $100 gift certificate to P.F. Changs for a night of family fun!

This is such a great opportunity for you to (literally) shower our kids with love, and we really cannot wait to see what you create!!

Option Two… STACK THE LOVE:

Help spread the word about TFFT and help support TFFT by requesting small donations from your friends!

• Set a goal of recruiting 10, 20, 50, 100 people you know to make a small donation to TFFT
• Be creative about the amount you request–“kiss your latte goodbye,” for example
• Set up your very own fundraising page on CROWDRISE
• Share your Valentine Challenge with your social network
• The person or family who recruits the most people to donate wins a $100 gift card to The Palm!

The main goal here is to harness the power in numbers and to make a BIG impact with many $1 $5, $10, $20.. donations!

Thank you all for reading this blog, being our cheerleaders, and going out and spreading TFFT’s story with the world!

Leave a comment or email kaitlin@thefoundationfortomorrow.org with any thoughts/questions.

We must also give a big THANK YOU to Peggy Tuttle of Tuttle Design Studios who spent hours creating the custom illustrations you see above. Thank you, Peggy, for bringing our vision to life with your playful drawings!